Stay connected with your customers – Small Business Blunders vol. 7

Hi. My name’s Adam, with Adam Lowe Creative. I help small businesses overcome the challenges and obstacles that we all face. One of the challenges that I know I struggle with and that I see a lot of other small businesses struggle with is keeping in contact with current customers and past customers. So this is incredibly important, especially since most businesses get the majority of their new work from referrals. So make sure that you’re reaching out to people that you’ve done business with at least on a yearly basis.

There are a couple of different ways you can do this. A lot of people have email newsletters that they send out, either monthly or quarterly. That’s a great way to just keep you top of mind, let people know what’s going on in your business, and also let people know if there are any changes that they should know about. Maybe you’ve started a new product or service, and you just wanna get the word out there. Your email list is very, very important for that.

Maybe you’re just picking up the phone to say hi. “Hey, Bob. I haven’t seen you in about a year. I’d love to catch up with you over coffee and see how things are going.” It’s very easy to do, and believe it or not, your customers really do appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong. There’s gonna be a lot of times when your customers feel like you’re inconveniencing them, and that’s okay. You’re gonna have people that unsubscribe from your mailing lists, and that’s okay. But usually, the good outweighs the bad. I can’t tell you how many times I pick up the phone or I send an email or someone even responds to an email newsletter that I send them, and they just say thank you. And they just say, “Hey, it’s great hearing from you.”

So one of the things that I have started doing, is sending out holiday cards to somebody and sending handwritten thank-you cards to people. Sometimes I send a handwritten card to people just for the heck of it. Because maybe I was thinking about them on my commute in, and I just write a little note to say, “Hi. Just thinking about you today.” I phrase it in a way that’s not quite so creepy. But I do send them a little note that just lets them know that I’m thinking about them and that I appreciate any referrals that they can pass along, and that I appreciate any business that they’ve given me.

So keep in touch with your customers, whether they are customers that you work with on a monthly basis or somebody that you’ve only worked with once or twice. Just let them know that you still exist and you’re really gonna see that effort come back to you tenfold. Take care and I’ll talk to you next week.